Oz

This morning I woke up in Chelsea. I’d stayed overnight with Bryan and his boyfriend after an evening of bar-hopping, and it felt pretty cool to walk out of their building at 8:15 this morning and be in the heart of gayville. It had been more than a year since I’d last been in Manhattan on a weekday morning; I felt like I was seeing a whole new side of the city. I felt like I was part of a privileged community of people. Even though the streets are pretty ordinary at 8:15 in the morning, it felt kind of magical.

Several years ago I read the first book in this fictional series by John Jakes about a man and his descendants establishing themselves in America. I read about the young Philippe Charboneau of France arriving in colonial Boston and transforming himself into the American Philip Kent. When I read that book, I was moved by the descriptions of a fresh, bustling, colonial American city, a brand new world bursting with secrets, a place that could give you the chance to make a new life for yourself.

How great it would be to come home to Manhattan on a summer night! Come home to my apartment, change my clothes, go back out into the world.

That’s what last night was like. After a good therapy session (much more upbeat than last week), I arrived at Bryan’s place with my work bag and a backpack of clothes. I’ve been inside so few Manhattan apartments in my life, and it’s always a shock to walk up the front steps and through the front door of a narrow apartment building, sandwiched between other buildings, and see its insides. There’s always the illusion of more space than there really is.

I changed into a t-shirt and shorts and then Bryan gave me a photo-and-video introduction to the world of flag-dancing. Then we went out and had dinner at the Bendix Diner on Eighth Avenue, a good, decent place with good, decent food where I’ve had several meals before, and we talked for quite a while. New York City. Getting established. Different types of relationships. The wondrousness of trying new things.

From there we went to Barracuda, where Bryan’s guy met up with us. Thence to Blu on 23rd Street, where we had a few drinks and talked of cabbages and kings. After the boyfriend went home, Bryan and I walked over to the Lure, a leather bar, for a brief visit, for reasons I won’t get into. It was my first time inside a leather bar, although it was a Tuesday night, so the place was pretty empty. But I saw some chains in the bathroom, and the bathroom walls were painted black. From the Lure we went over to XL, a pretty (and pretty new) bar in Chelsea that’s very shiny and fluorescent, like something out of the Jetsons.

By that point I was pretty tired. It was a weeknight and I’d had three drinks. So we went back to their apartment at about 12:30. The boyfriend was asleep, but there was a futon bed already set up for me, which was essentially in the same room as the bedroom. They have three cute cats, and I have to admit I didn’t sleep too well, but not because of the cats. Several times during the night the air conditioner cycled on and off, and whenever it came on, there was this loud noise that woke me up and scared the bejeezus out of me. On top of that I kept waking up from rather explicit dreams.

I got up at 7:30, showered, left their place at 8:15 and got to my office in Newark at 9:00. Not a bad commute at all. But I feel like I’m among the walking dead today.

What a weekend.

Did I say weekend? Well, it felt like a weekend. It was a little sliver of weekend snuck into the middle of my workweek. A nice way to break things up. And despite the fact that I’m in Manhattan several times a week, last night was new. In some ways I felt like I was visiting the city again for the first time.

That settles it. As soon as I’ve figured out what I’m doing job-wise, I’m going to look for a place in Manhattan. Even though I only live 20 minutes from the West Village right now, there really is a big difference. If I screw up, I screw up. I can always look for a new place if the first one doesn’t work out.

I flew out of JFK Airport with my family one warm summer evening when I was 18. We were going to Israel for two weeks. I had spent much of that summer coming to terms with my sexuality and daydreaming about being gay in New York. As we were sitting in the airplane on the runway, I could see the sun setting over the Manhattan skyline; the sky was purple and orange and I could almost see the heat rising from the distant buildings. I stared out the airplane window, stared out at the distant silhouette, my eyes fixed on the low valley of buildings stretching between the Empire State Building and the World Trade Center. Somewhere in that valley were the streets of Chelsea and the West Village. It was a Friday night and I started to imagine what all the gay men there would be doing that night; they’d be getting dressed up, getting ready to go out to all the bars and clubs, where they’d meet people and fall in love on a romantic summer night. As the plane taxied down the runway and we took off into the air, I stared and stared, trying with all my might to see the streets of lower Manhattan. But we were too far away.

Everything on the ground became smaller and smaller as we flew up and out over the water. We were off to a distant land. But at that moment I desperately wanted to go back.